Since there are, however, some democratic (or meritocratic, as suggested by @gerrit) elements to the governance of this mortal realm - election of moderators, and so on - one model to which SE could be said to bear a
slight resemblance is the Democracy / Theocracy amalgam of Iran (with,
admittedly, many
differences, not least of which is that Wikipedia does not appear to be contemplating an invasion of SE to prevent us from getting nukes).